"How can I be sure,
in a world
that's constantly changing,
how can I be sure
where I stand with you..."
The Young Rascal's "How Can I Be Sure," at first blush sounds like the angst-filled insecurity of a teenager in love. But for me, it meant so much more. This song came out in 1967. I was 13 years old. I didn't have a boyfriend. I didn't want one. What I did want, was to belong. And this song spoke to the girl in me that never felt like she belonged anywhere -- to anyone.
A few weeks ago, a dear friend shared Brene Brown's new book, Braving the Wilderness, with me. I can only read a few pages at a time without needing to stop and process all the ways it is opening old wounds for a deeper cleansing. And I am letting the balm of understanding it leaves in its wake - penetrate deeply.
Today I was reading the transcript from Krista Tippett's February 8, 2018 interview with Brene' Brown. In it, Brene' shares this moment from her research on belonging with a group of middle school students:
"I was asking these middle schoolers what the difference was — what they thought the difference was between fitting in and belonging. And they just had these incredibly simple and profound answers: “Fitting in is when you want to be a part of something. Belonging is when others want you.”
It stopped me in my tracks. I was back there -- in middle school, and high school, at camp, in the faculty lounge, the staff dining room, the office, PTA meetings, neighborhood HOA meetings -- my family. Here is the thing:
"Fitting in is when you
want to be a part of something.
"Belonging is when others want you.”
It's not just about letting someone be among us. Its about letting them know that we want them with us. What an "aha" moment this has been for me. This is what I always longed to feel -- and always worked to hard to earn. And you can never earn someone wanting you. That's not about you, it's about them. But I didn't understand that.
Later in the interview, Krista Tippets responds to Brene with this insight:
"This observation is so helpful. You said, “We are hardwired for belonging and connection. We’re hardwired to want it, and need it so much -- yet, the first thing we do is sacrifice ourselves and who we are to achieve it.”
Oh my goodness, that was me. I wanted so badly to belong. But because I had conflated belonging with fitting in, I thought belonging was something I could "achieve."
You see, I knew how to make myself indispensable. I could mold myself to accommodate any social need. Do you need a fan -- I will be your fan. Do you need someone to help you with your homework -- I will study that section so hard that even though I might have failed it earlier myself, because you need for me to know it, in order to help you -- I will become an expert on that subject. I was a social, professional, relationship chameleon. Put me in a group of girls with green eyes, and I would try to make my eyes turn green.
But the problem was, I was what you needed, not who you wanted to be with -- and I knew it. At school, I was a scholar for the teachers, the over-eager-to-be-accepted chum - with other girls, and I was the all-too-willing cheerleader - for the boys. Whatever you needed, I was your girl.
In her interview with Krista, Brene' addresses the deep loneliness that comes from morphing into something inauthentic, in our efforts to just belong::
"What if loneliness is driven in part by our lack of authenticity — that I can go to a party, and I can be the belle of the ball and come home completely disconnected, lonely, anxious, because never once during that experience was I myself? I was who I thought they wanted me to be."
This is the kind of loneliness I felt for many years. In my striving to belong with others, I failed to belong to myself. My morphing into what I thought someone else wanted/needed me to be, wasn't leading to any real connection, It was really just about fitting in. And for most of my life I didn't understand why -- even though I could make myself fit in -- I had never felt a true sense of belonging.
That was, until the house of cards I'd been carefully building -- for many years -- fell apart. The particulars of that story are not important to this post. Going from being adored and admired to judged and rejected - in the space of a moment - will humble all false confidence, and teach you a lot about where your true worth lies. It was a hard lesson, but one I needed and am now deeply grateful for.
I'd molded myself to fit what I thought were the expectations of the community I'd become a part of. When something needed to change -- there was no room for that adjustment. I hadn't been wanted for who I was -- I had just made myself fit a particular open space in the puzzle. As long as I stayed in that shape, everything was okay. But that was just me trying to fit in. It was not that unconditional sense of belonging that we all hunger for.
And I didn't know the difference. I'd been doing it so long -- in my family, classrooms, work-places -- that fitting in had become my modus operandi.
After that difficult time of being "not wanted" -- when I no longer fit the shape "they" needed, I stepped back. It wasn't long before I realized that I needed a spiritual sense of what it means to really "belong."
Over the past forty years I have had a nagging suspicion that most of our societal ills come from an underlying sense of not belonging. As a teacher I could see it on the faces of students of every age. I have watched it at camp, in women's groups, at coffeehouses. And I've always thought that if we can just find the right "fit" for our gifts, idiosyncrasies and talents -- the right place to serve, the right school, the right family, the right relationship -- we would feel this belonging.
But it isn't enough to find the right space -- and then alter ourselves to fit that space. Nor is it enought to simply let someone join our group, gathering, family. We have to help them feel wanted - for who they are, not for who they think we want them to be.
I was once in a relationship I'd worked very hard to make work. And it wasn't. It just wasn't working. At one point the other person said to me, "I don't know that this can be healed, but I can tolerate you." No joke. I felt more defeated and alone by being told I could be tolerated, than if the person would have said that they just couldn't love me anymore.
There is no real love -- or belonging -- in tolerance. Tolerance is not spiritual. Its starting point is not God. It starts from the premise that there is something lacking in another that we --in all our generous human nobility -- can tolerate.
But this is not how God loves. And it certainly wasn't how Jesus modeled his Father's love. Mary Baker Eddy reminds us that:
"Jesus beheld in Science
the perfect man who appeared
to him, where sinning mortal man
appears to mortals.
"In this perfect man,
the savior saw
God's own likeness..."
Jesus wasn't just nobly tolerating a somewhat flawed mortal -- he was loving the man he knew to be the only possible version of God's child. And who wouldn't want to be with that man -- or woman.
This post is not about whether we fit-in with the group we have chosen, or a family we have been born (or borne) into. It is about belonging. It is about wanting each other. It is about leaving each encounter with a feeling of having been with someone we want to know and knowing we were wanted -- for ourselves, not the fitting-in version of that is inauthentic at best, and leaves us feeling even more alone when "it" is loved and accepted into the circle.
I truly believe that when we understand the universal desire to belong, our privilege of making others feel wanted, and the countless opportunities we have each day to really be with someone -- for a moment or a lifetime -- we will know how to:
"transform our earth,
to heaven..."
We are not just flotsam and jetsam being randomly blown into the immensity of human drama -- we belong in every moment. God wants us there. We have been sent there for a holy purpose. It is our privilege to open the eyes of our hearts and see who is in front of us -- and want to be there, to help them feel wanted. This is our security. To know that wherever we are, whoever we are with -- we are wanted there by the One who holds the wind in his grasp and orders the stars in the courses.
What a difference it would make in the lives of our children, our elders, our seemingly used-up and discarded soldiers and servant-leaders, our tolerated -- to know they are wanted - truly wanted. There is no love in tolerance. There is no real love in just letting someone join our group, enter our space, or be a part of our family. Being tolerated -- or even appreciated for finding a way to fit in -- is not the same as belonging. When we know the difference, we can make a difference.
offered with Love,
Kate
That was, until the house of cards I'd been carefully building -- for many years -- fell apart. The particulars of that story are not important to this post. Going from being adored and admired to judged and rejected - in the space of a moment - will humble all false confidence, and teach you a lot about where your true worth lies. It was a hard lesson, but one I needed and am now deeply grateful for.
I'd molded myself to fit what I thought were the expectations of the community I'd become a part of. When something needed to change -- there was no room for that adjustment. I hadn't been wanted for who I was -- I had just made myself fit a particular open space in the puzzle. As long as I stayed in that shape, everything was okay. But that was just me trying to fit in. It was not that unconditional sense of belonging that we all hunger for.
And I didn't know the difference. I'd been doing it so long -- in my family, classrooms, work-places -- that fitting in had become my modus operandi.
After that difficult time of being "not wanted" -- when I no longer fit the shape "they" needed, I stepped back. It wasn't long before I realized that I needed a spiritual sense of what it means to really "belong."
Over the past forty years I have had a nagging suspicion that most of our societal ills come from an underlying sense of not belonging. As a teacher I could see it on the faces of students of every age. I have watched it at camp, in women's groups, at coffeehouses. And I've always thought that if we can just find the right "fit" for our gifts, idiosyncrasies and talents -- the right place to serve, the right school, the right family, the right relationship -- we would feel this belonging.
But it isn't enough to find the right space -- and then alter ourselves to fit that space. Nor is it enought to simply let someone join our group, gathering, family. We have to help them feel wanted - for who they are, not for who they think we want them to be.
I was once in a relationship I'd worked very hard to make work. And it wasn't. It just wasn't working. At one point the other person said to me, "I don't know that this can be healed, but I can tolerate you." No joke. I felt more defeated and alone by being told I could be tolerated, than if the person would have said that they just couldn't love me anymore.
There is no real love -- or belonging -- in tolerance. Tolerance is not spiritual. Its starting point is not God. It starts from the premise that there is something lacking in another that we --in all our generous human nobility -- can tolerate.
But this is not how God loves. And it certainly wasn't how Jesus modeled his Father's love. Mary Baker Eddy reminds us that:
"Jesus beheld in Science
the perfect man who appeared
to him, where sinning mortal man
appears to mortals.
"In this perfect man,
the savior saw
God's own likeness..."
Jesus wasn't just nobly tolerating a somewhat flawed mortal -- he was loving the man he knew to be the only possible version of God's child. And who wouldn't want to be with that man -- or woman.
This post is not about whether we fit-in with the group we have chosen, or a family we have been born (or borne) into. It is about belonging. It is about wanting each other. It is about leaving each encounter with a feeling of having been with someone we want to know and knowing we were wanted -- for ourselves, not the fitting-in version of that is inauthentic at best, and leaves us feeling even more alone when "it" is loved and accepted into the circle.
I truly believe that when we understand the universal desire to belong, our privilege of making others feel wanted, and the countless opportunities we have each day to really be with someone -- for a moment or a lifetime -- we will know how to:
"transform our earth,
to heaven..."
We are not just flotsam and jetsam being randomly blown into the immensity of human drama -- we belong in every moment. God wants us there. We have been sent there for a holy purpose. It is our privilege to open the eyes of our hearts and see who is in front of us -- and want to be there, to help them feel wanted. This is our security. To know that wherever we are, whoever we are with -- we are wanted there by the One who holds the wind in his grasp and orders the stars in the courses.
What a difference it would make in the lives of our children, our elders, our seemingly used-up and discarded soldiers and servant-leaders, our tolerated -- to know they are wanted - truly wanted. There is no love in tolerance. There is no real love in just letting someone join our group, enter our space, or be a part of our family. Being tolerated -- or even appreciated for finding a way to fit in -- is not the same as belonging. When we know the difference, we can make a difference.
offered with Love,
Kate
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